Decent design and build quality (though it's plastic - would have been nice to see a metal or glass design)

The Samsung Experience UI skin on top of Android is a pretty decent skin and packs a lot of features - there’s Bixby, Face Recognition, which works fine and there are features like themes, game launcher, Samsung Pay mini, Samsung Cloud, games launcher, one handed mode and more

Decent dual camera setup on the rear - especially in proper lighting conditions, the camera takes good images, and low-light performance is not too bad either

Very good battery life - even with heavy use, you should end up with 30 percent battery by the end of the day

Bold, stunning design thanks to the diamond-like reflective body - this is a device that certainly stands out - it is housed inside a fibre-glass casing that has been cut at different angles such that each section of the glass back turns to a different shade of black when light is reflecting off it!

Lightweight and well built

Decent, modern 18:9 display with minimal bezels - which means that despite the large screen size, the phone will fit nicely into your hand

Good all-round performance, similar to Snapdragon 636 phones, like the Redmi Note 5 Pro

Decent rear and front cameras - both the cameras support depth of field or Portrait effect, and Augmented Reality (AR) stickers

The rear camera pictures are reasonably crisp, and have decent color reproduction

The front camera relies heavily on Oppo’s AI algorithms to fine-tune the photos which results in good (if slightly artificial looking) photos

Overall, cameras are decent, but not quite up to the high benchmark of the Redmi Note 5 Pro

Dedicated dual SIM card slots and microSD slot

Supports VoLTE on both the dual sim slots

Good battery life - easily gives over a day’s usage for an average user

On the whole, the Realme 1 offers a very solid option in spite of being in a super competitive price segment having some great phones by the likes of Xiaomi and Asus - if an interesting design, fast performance and good battery life are your primary concerns, then it should definitely be towards the top of your shortlist

2-minute Review [Negatives]

The tall, 18.5:9 AMOLED display on the Samsung Galaxy J8 is pretty decent, but could have had better resolution

The display also has significant bezels, whereas a lot of modern phones with tall displays these days have very little bezels

No ambient light sensor, which is a big miss at this price point

No compass

Also lacks a notification LED

Fingerprint & face recognition is on the slow side

Average performance considering the price bracket, thanks to the budget Snapdragon 450 at the core, which is these days more commonly seen in phones under Rs 10k - while day to day performance is alright, but push the phone a bit and it will start to stutter - moreover, the Samsung Experience 9.0 has a ton of unnecessary and sluggish animations, that don't help

The dual rear camera setup is decent, but the portrait mode is pretty mediocre, with very ordinary edge detection - the blurring feels mostly unnatural

Uses the old micro-USB standard instead of a modern USB Type-C port

No fast charging support

On the whole, the Samsung Galaxy J8 is hard to recommend - the likes of Redmi Note 5 Pro and ZenFone Max Pro bring faster processors, better displays and more premium designs

No fingerprint sensor, so you have to rely on the face unlock for quick unlocking (which does work quite well)

The display is decent on the whole, but outdoor visibility is pretty ordinary

Oppo's Color OS UI is not the most refined Android UI, and looks cluttered at places

No support for fast charging - the phones take a little over two hours to charge from zero to full